Diane Ravitch: Recommends federal government pay for a national test

... Where ideological clashes doomed a quest for national standards in the 1990s, pragmatic calculations might tip the balance in favor now. Let the federal government pay for a national test and the formulation of standards, suggests Diane Ravitch, a clear-eyed historian of school reforms who was an assistant secretary of education during George H.W. Bush’s administration. The move could save the states the estimated half-billion dollars they spend on their own testing programs — and, Ravitch notes, give the U.S. government a job it is good at: gathering and spreading information about how states are faring.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress could serve as a model for a test that judges students’ ability to apply their knowledge and thus discourages rote coaching....